Re: [tied] Nominative: A hybrid view

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Miguel Carrasquer <mcv@...> wrote:
[..]
> For Jens: there *is* a construction with clearly plural-1/2 p.-
plural
> in Uralic, namely the Mordvin stative (extended to the Mordvin
verb).
>
> Mordvin has a true stative (i.e. verbal endings attached to nouns),
> and the 1st person plural is *-ta-mo-k > -tank, -tano, 2pl. *-ta-
do-k
> > -tadk, -tado (e.g. Erza Mordvin sazorta-no "we are sisters").
>
> The endings -tano, -tado are also the regular intransitive verbal
> endings.
[..]

Thank you, Miguel, but I actually knew that. It is what Sauvageot
uses in L'Élaboration de la langue finnoise (1973) to support his
analysis of Finn. -mme, -tte as, not *-kmek, *-ktek, but as *-t-mek,
*-t-tek. I have also referred to it where I have presented my IE
analysis in shorthand style (a footnote in my paper on personal
pronouns). I had in fact made the same analysis myself before I
heard of Sauvageot's book. My thinking was instigated by a paper
read by Bojan C^op in Vienna in 1973 where I was at the time. His
preforms *-H-me-H etc. really set me wondering: Why would a "present
marker" only appear in the plural, and why would it have the same
shape as the plural marker? I then came up with basically the idea I
have repeated here.

I find it most gratifying that there is an essive expression of the
verb like this (a sketch of Mordwin grammar by one Feoktistov terms
it "present-future"), for that is all I need. I do not need this to
be the *only* way a verbal notion can be expressed in Uralic, I just
need it to be possible.

I am open to criticism, but the structure with number+person+number
appears to be demanded by the IE verbal endings to make anything
give any sense. There still is some waylength to go until they all
open up and become fully transparent. The assumption of a shared
innovation in which this structure generalized the dual marker in
the final part of the non-sg. endings in IE and Uralic has certainly
made a few things easier in my view.

Jens